Add support for ATtiny212/412 and ATtiny214/414/814 and ATtiny416/816
Sembiance opened this issue · 8 comments
There are a bunch of new ATtiny chips coming soon:
ATtiny212/412: http://ww1.microchip.com/downloads/en/DeviceDoc/40001911A.pdf
ATtiny214/414/814: http://ww1.microchip.com/downloads/en/DeviceDoc/40001912A.pdf
ATtiny416/816: http://ww1.microchip.com/downloads/en/DeviceDoc/40001913A.pdf
These are quite exciting as they each have:
- I2C (Master+Slave)
- SPI (Master+Slave)
- USART
- DAC
- RTC
- Sleep Modes
- PTC (814 and 816 only)
The only one available for purchase now is the ATtiny414 from DigiKey: https://www.digikey.com/product-detail/en/microchip-technology/ATTINY414-SSFR/ATTINY414-SSFRCT-ND/7682217
I've got a couple of ATtiny414's on the way, but sadly I won't be able to do any experimentation with them for a few months as I'm working on some other projects.
Just thought I'd get the ball rolling on adding support for these. I'm particularly excited about the ATtiny412 as it's a tiny 8-pin chip but still with all the features mentioned above.
These are very exciting parts - but the process of supporting them in Arduino is a monumental task as every single library function must be rewritten. The peripherals (even GPIO) are pic-like, not AVR-like, so they need their own implementation of EVERYTHING - serial, digitalread/etc, wire, spi, pwm, adc input.
This is a huge task and would be covered by a separate core. I do not expect to have time to do this - I certainly cannot do it alone. Talk to me on gitter if you're able to put time into this.
Also, until the Arduino AVR official board package's compiler is updated to a version that supports these parts, they wouldn't be really usable with the Arduino IDE.
When you consider the amount of development effort involved, I legitimately question whether adding support for these parts makes sense - you can't leverage the existing arduino libraries any more than you could with a totally different architecture. And at that point, aren't there ARM chips that are more attractive?
The only thing AVR about these is the instruction set - as far as I can tell, it's PIC peripherals bolted onto an AVR core.
Ahh, thanks for the info! Still somewhat new to arduino/electronics and wasn't aware they were so different underneath. Thanks.
Yeah - it's a shame that they apparently made ZERO effort to maintain compatibility with AVR-land.
I realize, probably needs incompatible implementation of all the new whizz-bang stuff - but the capabilities of Serial, I2C, SPI are essentially unchanged from the AVR line, as is - of course - GPIO. But alas, how you control them is all completely different.
One of the best things IMO about the AVR line is how the peripherals are so similar between chips - it's trivial to migrate code between AVR micros as a result.
I just wanted to thank you again for your helpful comments.
I decided that it's about time I moved away from Arduino and learned how to program a PIC directly with C. I'm very excited to learn all about this and am excited to be able to have a vast number of different MCU's available so I can choose the right one for the job!
So thanks again!
Just as a reminder, The Arduino dev team recently released their core files for the new Arduino UNO Wifi R2 which uses the brand new ATmega4809. I'm pretty sure these core files will make this project much more doable.
The good thing with these chips are price. You get a decent MCU for $0.30, so it's PIC price for an AVR.
#288 is the new issue for this discussion.
https://github.com/SpenceKonde/megaTinyCore This is happening now. Still not quite ready, but progressing quickly, follow that repo for updates